


Summers'son

by rallamajoop



Series: Summers'son [1]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Fluff, M/M, mutant!Wade, teen awkwardness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-19 09:49:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/571980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rallamajoop/pseuds/rallamajoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Settling into the 21st century is giving a teenaged Nathan some trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Arguably less of a real alternate universe than a canon-divergent AU where Nate happens to be of about high school age when he returns from the future, though this breaks down a bit when I have to justify what Wade's doing in the same age bracket. *waves hand* _Clearly_ meeting Wade is the most important thing that ever happened to Nate, so the universe would have to shift to accommodate the event.
> 
> In retrospect, it is positively hilarious that this was originally posted with an author's note assuring everyone that there was no way this was getting a sequel.

His first day of school is predictably awkward.

There used to be a school for mutants in this century, but Nathan arrived back here a couple of months too late – or too early, according to the more optimistic of the remaining X-Men. He'd have liked to hear more about it, but the one time he tried asking Scott he watched the man shut down – physically _and_ mentally – behind the few details he revealed, so he supposes he'll have to wait until that wound is a little less fresh, or until he next sees the others from the old team. He wishes it was easier to think of Scott as his father, but the few memories he still retains from before he was sent to the future don't gel easily with the reality. After two failed relationships with not-quite-the-same-woman, all Scott has left to show for it is a long-lost teenaged son who came back to him a virtual stranger, and he's determined to give them both some chance at a 'normal' life – even if it means uprooting them halfway across the country and inflicting a boy from a war-torn future on an ordinary high school until he settles into this century. Maybe the others are right, and within a year he'll be able to transfer to somewhere that won't force him to keep as many secrets, but Nathan isn't in the habit of getting his hopes too high.

Education where Nathan grew up meant reading and writing, basic mathematics, a smattering of history and science, and years of hard training in the art of staying alive. The Askani have a deep respect for the value of knowledge, but there's never any time to teach their children more than the essentials. He knows how to jury-rig a damaged plasma rifle to run off a spare battery, how to field-dress a gut wound, the complete history of the New Canaanite uprising, and a dozen useful tricks for decrypting a coded enemy message. He doesn't understand the difference between IBM and Macintosh, the stages of cell division, the significance of the Vietnam War, why his English teacher gets so excited about the work of T.S. Eliot, or _any_ part of the American political and legal system. (Nor do any of his classmates on that last count, but that's not very comforting either.) One teacher has already asked point blank what on earth he's been doing with all his school years thus far to come away so lacking in what she sees as the basics of common knowledge. She probably wouldn't have been very impressed with the real answer.

The classes he's being enrolled in are meant for students two years younger than him, and between his height and build he sticks out among their numbers like a sore thumb. The official story is that he spent his childhood in and out of treatment for a life-threatening, genetic medical condition. The vein of genuine truth in that version of events doesn't make the dishonesty sit much more comfortably. He feels more like a professional spy than a real student – what else would you call someone who needs such an elaborate cover story just to avoid suspicion?

His telepathy has saved him from a couple of awkward moments, and distracted him badly at a couple of wrong ones. With the last of the TO virus finally purged from his body his powers are growing by the day, but control is going to get harder before it gets easier again, and all the thoughts he overhears in this time are so _foreign_. Everyone here is so pampered and comfortable; they don't have to worry about whether the next mission will be their last, so they spend their energy on school grades or money, or whether the cute girl in chem class will ever notice them, or whether their shoes are out of fashion, or whether their mother's boyfriend is going to move in, or the incomprehensible social politics that seem to govern their age group. They learn about the reality of war in school, but it might as well be something from another planet for all it means to them. There's so much more variety and so much less focus; it's like being cured of colour blindness to find yourself in a cotton-candy world with no words for black or white.

This is where he needs to be; this era is the key point to stop Apocalypse's rise to power before it can begin. He just isn't sure how comfortable he is with the thought that _this_ is the kind of world his clan fought so long and hard to restore.

The telepathic overload isn't so bad in class, where most (or at least _some_ ) of the other students are focusing on the subject. The echo of the lesson that comes back filtered through their own experiences can be quite enlightening, especially when he needs a quick translation for one of the more obscure language terms from this century.

His first lunch break is... a different experience.

Tuning out the worst of the mindless psychic background noise is the first trick any psychic learns, by sheer force of will if necessary, since the alternative involves going stark raving mad within a month. Nathan's only just learning that it doesn't work so well when _everything_ around him is so unfamiliar that his instincts have a dozen different things flagged as potential dangers before he can correct them – and his telepathy is operating at higher volume than he's ever had to deal with, so he's been on edge since the first thing that morning. One of the few signatures he never learnt to filter out is the sight of himself being watched through a stranger's eyes – that one pierces through the background chatter as clear as someone calling his name. In fact, he's spent most of his life training himself to listen _for_ it – a stranger watching him may well be doing so through sniper sights.

Everyone is a stranger to him here. If Scott had hoped he'd be able blend into the sea of anonymous faces of two thousand other students well enough to avoid attention, he hadn't counted on just how much his son was going to stand out.

There are probably only a dozen people out of the hundreds in the cafeteria who notice him when he walks in, but even that's too many.

_...hey, new kid? Wonder where he's from._  
...whoa, how have I not noticed him _before? What a cutie!_  
...looky-looky, it's that noob from English. What was he, raised in a cave? Freak.  
...check out the build on that guy. Five bucks says he's on the football team by Friday.

With the state of Nathan's nerves every mental voice sounds like a gunshot – hostile, friendly, it doesn't make a difference. Classroom introductions went by without making him break a sweat, but this attention is coming from a dozen directions in a crowd and all his instincts are screaming that _any_ of them could be an enemy agent.

Someone jostles him from behind, and Nathan comes _this close_ to responding to the 'threat' by swinging around and punching them in the face before he catches himself. He's not coping, he should turn around right now and get out of here, find somewhere quiet to get a grip on himself – but if he does that he's only going to attract more attention and that's the last thing he can afford. He's going to have to learn how to deal with this sooner or later, and if trial by fire is the only way to learn – then it's the only way to learn.

_...ha, transfer kids. Enjoy the easy times while they last, dickhead, because you are in for a world of pain if you think that attitude's going to fly in this joint._

He joins the end of the cafeteria queue, and tries not to look as self-conscious as he feels. Evidence suggests this backfires badly.

_...has that guy bleached his fringe?_ Just _his fringe? Has that ever been in fashion on this planet?  
...shitshitshit just what I fucking need, some foreign asshole is gonna walk in here and take my spot on the team just coz he's a million feet tall..._

Puzzled, Nathan looks around, and quickly spots a boy only a few feet behind him in the queue who's a good head taller than he is. Why is he getting noticed for his height? Is it something about his posture? It would be just his luck if even the way he carries himself is enough to make him stand out.

_...aww, poor sweetheart looks so lost. I should go say hi, see if he needs a friend. See if he's doing anything Saturday night...  
...wow, where have they been hiding_ dat _piece of ass? Shit, don't crane. Someone is going to see you craning. Anyway he's probably one of those stuck-up rich jocks from some private school who won't give you the time of day which is a fucking waste if you ask me, not that he'd go out with me anyway..._

Someone across the room is picturing him naked – wait, correction, that's just the last one again. Of all the irrational taboos in this century, he's never going to understand the obsession people here have with nudity.

Naked-imaginary-Nathan is now inviting his imagine-er over for a closer look.

At least _that's_ familiar territory. Funny thing to find halfway comforting, but people's fantasies are one thing he's used to overhearing. Some things don't change no matter what year it is.

More to the point, it's one of few stranger-thoughts he has plenty of practice filtering out.

He risks a look around the room and spots at least three faces looking quickly away, and almost misses it when he reaches the front of the queue.

The worst of the food here is better than the reconstituted sludge from the bottom of the emergency supplies back home, but nothing looks very appetising to him today.

* * *

His second day seems to be going better until he gets to gym class. It's not that he has any trouble with the general idea of sports, but even eight hours sleep barely took the edge off yesterday's headache, and the last thing he needs is to be thrown into a competitive game he's never played before, where all the thoughts he's picking up from the other team _are_ intentionally threatening. One fumble of the ball from him in the midst of so many distractions, and the thoughts coming from his own team aren't much friendlier.

Telepathy isn't the only problem. So far, everyone else has been assuming the time that one guy went flying off his feet was just a bad stumble, but he can't count on being that lucky if reflex kicks in again.

And volleyball is supposed to be one of the _less_ violent sports on the curriculum.

Relief finally comes at halfway through the class, by which time he's so obviously dizzy and disoriented that the coach lets him go sit down on the benches and catch his breath. Elaborate cover stories involving degenerative diseases do have the odd benefit – at least when there's an element of truth to them.

It's not the sitting down that helps so much as that the rest of his class are now too busy with the game to pay much attention to him, but it makes the difference he needs. Nathan rests his head in his hands and goes through a meditative technique the Askani taught him back when his powers first emerged. He wonders if he can convince Scott to let him miss school until his telepathy levels out again – except that at the rate it's been increasing over the last week he's starting to worry it's never going to level out.

The exercise works unusually well, especially considering the volume of background noise around this place. So well he doesn't notice anyone approaching until there's a bottle full of water being stuck in his face.

Nathan glances up and finds himself looking into a face covered in a grotesquely fascinating network of scar tissue. The hand holding the bottle out to him is coated in more of the same.

The most startling part is actually to find himself recognising their owner – not because they've been introduced, but he's noticed the other boy around the school hallways once or twice. He's hard to miss, equally because of the skin and the wide berth much of the student population tends to give him. There's more than his appearance to blame for the latter, both the thoughts and the comments Nate's heard in his presence tag him as a trouble maker. Given that, and what Nathan's gathered about what passes for 'humour' around this school, he's probably going to be allowed to drink half the water before being told it has someone else's spit in it.

There's an easy way of checking up on that one.

_...whoa, he didn't even flinch! 'Course he's probably going to accuse me of pissing in the bottle or something like the rest of them would..._

There's no sense of any bad intentions, just low expectations. Feeling somewhat chastised, Nathan accepts the water quickly.

"Thanks." He means it, he hadn't even noticed how thirsty he was until now.

His benefactor shrugs it off. "No sweat. Now when Mrs _Ampersand_ asks me why I took a million years getting back from the gents I can tell her I was distributing water to poor, helpless, dehydration victims and I won't even be..." he trails off, suddenly very distracted by the motion of Nathan's throat as he downs half the bottle without coming up for air, and it's only then that he clicks that it's not just the face that's familiar – this is the same guy from the cafeteria yesterday who took one look at him and decided he was a stuck up bastard who'd probably look really hot in the nude.

And people here think _he's_ the weird one.

He figures he should still probably make an effort to be polite, since he's being given a chance to prove his non-bastardness. He _is_ feeling better for the drink.

"Nathan Summers," he says, holding out a hand and trying to look grateful.

The other boy stares at the hand for a second before replying, which is Nathan's first reminder that no-one else he's met in his own age group has bothered shaking hands.

"Wade Wilson," the boy replies after only slightly too long a pause, putting his hand in Nathan's, "and 'cause I know you're about to ask, this _exciting_ skin condition of mine is called..."

"I wasn't," says Nathan. "Going to ask," he clarifies, when Wade gives him another funny look.

"Hey, everyone does," Wade protests. "Right after, 'is it contagious?'"

"I was assuming it was the kind of question you'd get sick of answering," says Nathan. This is when he realises he's still just holding Wade's hand, so he gives it a quick shake and lets go. No cringing away from the texture of his skin. No dragging his fingers to explore the stranger ridges either. He's seen worse, back home.

He practically _hears_ Wade's heart flutter. It might be kinder to be cruel, he doesn't want to lead Wade on – but Nathan's finding him oddly likeable, despite all his quirks. Maybe it's the effect of meeting someone else who's an outsider here. Or that – no matter what he's been told about his 'skin condition' – it's plain to Nathan that Wade's every bit as much a mutant as he is.

"So, Nate," Wade says quickly, with only the slightest of stammers, "since we're sharing awkward personal details here, does the thought of volleyball always make you always feel faint?"

Nathan was waiting for that one, just as surely as Wade was waiting for the skin question. He really isn't in the mood for another round of his cover story.

"It's a long story," he hedges.

"Awesome!" says Wade, plonking himself down on the bench beside Nathan. "I needed an excuse to put off going back to class."

Nathan stares at him for a long moment, trying to come up with a way of phrasing the answer that he can stomach. Much to his surprise, what comes out of his mouth is, "My mother died in a freak accident involving a volleyball."

Wade finds this completely hilarious. The laughter comes to an abrupt end with a snort. "Wait, you weren't serious, were you? We had this teacher once who made us take this class on 'risk in the home' and you would not _believe_ the stats on how many deaths each year get caused by accidents involving 'cushions, pillow cases and bedclothes'..."

Now it's Nathan's turn to laugh. "Completely not serious, don't worry." He pauses to consider. "Pillow cases?"

"And yet they're still legal in nearly fifty states! The state of this country, huh?"

Over on the court, the coach blows a whistle and the rest of the class heads for the change rooms. Nathan shrugs apologetically and offers Wade the rest of the water back.

"Keep it," says Wade, waving him away. "What's one bottle of overpriced, totally-honestly-from-the-lost-springs-of-Mt-Naturefairy vending machine water between buds?"

Nathan nods. "Nice meeting you, Wade." He means it too, even without the part where even a non-psychic could've heard that little trace of desperate hope attached to Wade's last word.

"Uhh, sure, you too, Nate!" Wade mutters back quickly, and scampers off to face the wrath of Mrs... whatever her real name is. It's easier to block out his thoughts the further away he gets (and Nate is feeling voyeuristic enough for one conversation), but he has a feeling he's made Wade's week.

He has a feeling Scott's not going to think much of his new friend, mutant or otherwise.

He's not going to care.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In all honesty, the first chapter of _Summers'son_ was always supposed to be a one-shot. I'd had plenty of idle thoughts about what might happen to young Nate and Wade later on, but nothing that seemed to want to add up to a proper ongoing narrative.
> 
> Eventually, I gave in and started writing down all my random-scenes-set-in-the-same-universe* anyway. No-one seemed to mind. 
> 
>    
> *Or alternate divergent pathways branching out from that same universe, in some cases. I really did mean it when I said this thing did not want to develop into a single coherent story. *cough*

The clock on the microwave says 2:36 AM when Nathan staggers into the kitchen. After waking up in complete darkness the greenish glow of the numbers is almost bright enough to see by, glaring out of the shadows like a judgement on his nerve being up at this hour. Nathan runs a hand along the wall until he finds the light switch, winces as his eyes adjust, presses his hands onto the kitchen table and breathes. 

The edge of the table is hard and sharp, the grain of the wood just deep enough to keep the texture short of smooth, equal under both of his palms. It's not reassuring, exactly, but it's real, and that will have to be enough. 

After a minute, there's the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, then Scott's voice calling, "Nathan?" He comes to a stop in the hallway, answer sighted before it can reply. 

"Sorry," Nathan says. "I didn't mean to wake you."

Scott steps into the doorway but pauses there, keeping his distance careful. "Bad dream?" 

Nathan wants to deny it – he's still not properly awake, he hardly knows Scott, and admitting to any weakness feels like too much – but it's a stupid impulse made entirely out of misplaced pride, and Scott already knows the answer. He gives a short nod. 

"You want to talk about it?"

"Not really. I... may have broken my wardrobe," Nathan admits. And blown out a light bulb. Or two.

"That would be the crunch I heard," observes Scott, moving into the kitchen to lean against the table beside him. "Don't worry about the wardrobe – it was an Ikea job, we used to buy them in bulk back at Xavier's." Nathan feels more than he sees the flash of sympathy in the look Scott gives him. "This may not be much comfort, but after everything you've been through, I'd be more worried if you _didn't_ get nightmares." 

Scott's still not sure how to be a father, but he's been a teacher for most of his adult life, and mutant teenagers staggering out of bed at two AM – that, he thinks he knows how to deal with. The presumption that he can be so easily lumped in with any other teen – the feeling that Scott actually _relaxed_ a bit that it was 'just' a nightmare – stings against Nathan's ego in ways that don't improve his mood. 

Scott may have a point, even if it's not the one he probably thinks. It's been barely a month by his own reckoning since he was cured of the TO virus; it's only natural he should be getting nightmares where the infection comes back – where he looks down at his arm and sees the metal crawling out of his pores and devouring his flesh before his eyes. He used to; dreams where every time he looked down the mesh would have spread a little further over his skin; where he'd see his body torn open by mine shrapnel only to watch the metal worm eagerly in to fill the gap; where he could feel it clawing its way through his chest, into his lungs, eroding all the humanity left in his body from the within. He'd wake up with his heart hammering against his ribs and the taste of steel on his lips. In the worst dreams the infection doesn't stop with him. 

But that was before they found the cure he'd never really hoped for and he'd woken up in a stranger's body, and a lifetime's worth of learning to compensate for the fact that his left side weighs half as much again as his right has all gone to waste. He's barely past the stage of startling every time something brushes against his left arm and he _feels_ it. He's practically had to learn how to run all over again from scratch. What's happened to his psionics is even worse. 

He _should_ be getting nightmares where the infection comes back. Instead, he dreams himself into the midst of a firefight, the Askani clan by his side, the Canaanites advancing in a wave that never seems to end. There's a gun in his hands, but he can't seem to make it work, and when he raises his arm to shield himself from a hail of enemy fire the metal cracks on impact and flakes away in sheets; it's no more than the thinnest skin over living flesh that offers no resistance as the bullets tear muscle from bone. Too late, he remembers why, reaches for his enemies with his mind, but he can't get a grip on them. He tries to shield himself but they rip right through, and in his panic he lashes out with all his power, finally hears the screams of his enemies – all but drowned out by the screams of his friends. 

"I didn't used to," he says. It comes out short, and he can't really pretend he hadn't meant it to. "Not like this."

"You didn't used to be able to levitate furniture in your sleep either," Scott points out, reasonably. "Look, Nathan – we all get this. Everyone whose powers give them more than good luck or bad breath. Most of us are through the worst of it by fourteen or fifteen – you're just getting it a little later."

"I've always had my powers." He must sound like a petulant child.

"You've had _some_ powers, you've never had them change overnight before. That's going to be a shock to your system whether it happens when you're twelve or when you're twenty five."

Nathan's meant to be the psychic one, so it's embarrassing that he doesn't get beyond the idea that Scott had meant something specific by that example until Scott's filling in the answer for him. "Your mother was forever moving things around in her sleep. There was one night when she and I were still... well. Somehow she rearranged all the drawers in our room while we were asleep; when I went looking for my training tracksuit in the morning I got a handful of her underwear instead. She always said she couldn't even remember what she'd been dreaming about afterwards." 

_Your mother_ – he's never sure whether Scott's talking about Jean or Madelyne when he says that. This time, evidently he means Jean. 

"That doesn't sound like a nightmare," says Nathan.

"That time? Probably just stress," agrees Scott, sounding far away. "The real nightmares were worse. The drawer incident just makes for the better story." 

Scott's trying to distract him, to lighten the mood, and Nathan can't quite resent him for it, even if it isn't working. He's thinking aloud, or not thinking at all, when he starts to ask, "Did she ever...?" He catches himself before he can finish, but his meaning must have been pretty clear. 

"Hurt me?" Scott finishes for him. "No. Not even once."

It would be so easy to find out for sure if Scott's lying, but for once in his life, Nathan isn't sure he wants to know. 

It's impossible for Nathan to so much as look around himself these days without being reminded how many times over he shouldn't be here. The woman who should have been his mother died before he was ever conceived and returned too late, but in her absence the universe sent Scott a clone named Madelyne Pryor to fill in the gap, and barely left her her sanity long enough to play her intended role. He should have died in infancy, consumed by the TO virus, but time itself looped backwards over its tracks to find a way to save him. He should never have been cured. There should never have been a way for him to be sent back here, old beyond his years, carrying the weight of a thousand years on his shoulders. Anyone could have told them it was far too much to hope for.

He should be four years old, according to his birth certificate, growing up in peace without the slightest notion of what the future will be if he fails. So many people, friend and foe alike, have sacrificed so much to bring him to this point. It's taken miracle after miracle that he should ever have lived this long at all, let alone been given the chance to make it up to all of them. 

Instead, it seems he can't even convince his subconscious that he was ever worth the bother. He feels so wretchedly ungrateful. 

"How long does it take for the nightmares to go away?" he asks. 

Something drops in Scott's demeanour. He looks Nathan right in the eye when he says, "Who said they go away?"

Nathan looks back, but the best he can do is make eye contact with his own reflection in the ruby-tinted lenses of Scott's sunglasses, and somehow it's not until then that it dawns on him that Scott stopped to put them on, even for a conversation with his own son in the middle of the night – like he does before ever daring to open his eyes in the morning, every morning since he was younger than Nathan is now. 

Nathan appreciates his honesty more than he would have false comfort, and all of a sudden it feels like the height of arrogance that he'd ever imagined his father wouldn't understand. 

"But it does get better once your powers settle down; when you're back in control," says Scott, and whatever it was that dropped out is back again, hardly a beat later. "What do you say we get out of the city this weekend? I've been letting you slack off too long, it's high time we found you some out-of-the-way spot where you can stretch your mental muscles properly for a change."

"I thought you wanted me to start on something small," says Nathan.

"That was before I knew you were up to shifting your wardrobe around," says Scott. "Trust me on this one: the big stuff is easy, threading a needle is where it you hit the sweat and tears. We'll work our way back down after we know where your new weight limit is sitting."

Nathan nods again, silently. As long as no-one is pretending it'll fix his problems overnight, it's a good plan. 

"You feeling ready to get back to sleep?" Scott asks. 

He is feeling better, but the idea of trying to get back to sleep remains singularly unattractive. He shakes his head. "Not yet."

Scott just rolls his shoulders and walks around the table towards the fridge. "Well, in that case, it may be too early for breakfast and a little late for a midnight snack, but I'm sure we can rummage something up."

The clock on the microwave is much less threatening when it's busy counting down the time left before the hamburgers are done. 

Nathan wakes up on the living room couch the next morning, a blanket hanging loosely over his shoulders, the early morning light streaming in around the vertical blinds. 

He doesn't remember dreaming about anything.


	3. Chapter 3

Their second meeting happens a day later when Wade comes flying past him around the corner of the gym and flattens himself against the wall, eyes flicking urgently back and forth for a better hiding place. 

Nathan reminds himself that there are no gunshots, that no-one is in any real danger, and says, "Wade?"

Back home, they'd once sprung a memorable raid on a Canaanite installation that was just on the cusp of perfecting a new model of panther-like, AI-guided war machine, only to arrive in time to see it all go horribly wrong as the entire prototype batch turned on its creators, one of whom had been running for all his life with three of them on his heels and the exit in sight _just_ as Nathan's team came bursting in through it from the other side. 

The mental impression of two very different kinds of panic colliding head-on in the man's mind at that moment and the state of Wade's mind when he sees Nathan standing there have more in common than he'd ever expected to see again. 

"Nate?" Wade breathes, voice squeakier than Nathan remembers it being. "Oh hey. What's up?" 

"What's going on?" Nathan asks.

Wade gets as far as, "I was just... uh... just about to... just looking for the..." before it somehow turns into a desperate, "Is anyone coming?"

"Just one," says Nate, before he can think better of it. It's automatic – he's used to questions like that being a lot more important. Fortunately, Wade is too busy panicking to ask him how he'd known without so much as glancing over his shoulder, and the sound of respectably modest heels over bitumen reaches them barely a second later anyway. It's coming from the opposite direction to wherever Wade came from, but the pace suggests the wearer means business. 

Wade's state of panic ratchets up another notch. "Shit. Shit shit shit shit shittity-" _He knows no-one saw him but he's barely around the corner and if they catch him running away... what the_ hell _high school, there's_ always _a delivery van (abandoned with the back doors open and lots of nice big empty boxes and no-one ever looks behind them) parked around here at this time of day (or was that Thursdays? shit). He's so going to get detention again for this – and it would be totally worth only now he's going to get caught_ right in front of Nate _(stupid sexy Nate) and he's never going to live it down and this is officially the worst.._.

"Wade, I can see you from here and don't you think about running!" yells a voice, and Wade freezes. 

"I didn't do it!" he yelps. 

Nathan looks around and is startled to recognise the woman coming towards them as the same Mrs Hinrichs who has so far spent two classes with him somewhere between frustrated and merely bemused by his inability to name a single person who has ever been president of the United States and vague idea that the Civil War and the American War of Independence were different names for the same event. Apparently she also knows Wade. 

It's possible everyone at the school knows Wade. Nathan's starting to get the idea he doesn't leave an impression so much as a blast radius.

"Well," says Mrs Hinrichs, looking straight past Nathan, "you can tell Mr Bernon all about everything you 'didn't do' in his office. _Now._ "

Wade gives Nathan one last, desperate look. Struck by a burst of inspiration that he's not entirely sure was his own, Nathan finds himself asking, "Is something wrong? Wade was just showing me around the school. That isn't against the rules, is it?"

Mrs Hinrichs turns to Nathan just in time to miss Wade's eyes widening. "Nathan, surely someone showed you around on your first day."

"Yes, but it was a bit rushed," Nathan says. "Wade offered to fill in some of the gaps."

" _Did you know_ , Mrs H," Wade says, recovering fast, "that no-one thought to show my bud Nate here the secret back way into the main building through the window near the drainpipe on the second floor that is so very useful when you're running late (or have to make an innocent stop past the box with volume controls to the PA system on your way to class)? Told him the sordid tale of Mr Netherfield who had to leave teaching for 'medical reasons' or shown him the exact place Mr N. was caught smoking a 'home-rolled (ahem) cigarette' behind the gym? Warned him about what really goes into the cafeteria meatloaf or what happens when you pour coke on their mashed potatoes? Showed him-"

"Wade," Mrs Hinrichs warns.

"'Cause I don't know about the rest of the school population, Mrs H., but _some_ of us were raised to be more neighbourly than that."

Mrs Hinrichs narrows her eyes at them in a way that makes Nathan wonder how he'd ever imagined she'd take his alibi for Wade at face value. _She's seen too much of Wade's past misbehaviour to expect any better; the year he spent in one of her own classes is not an experience she'll soon forget. Truth be told she's always felt a little too sorry for him to loathe him to the degree most of his other instructors reach by the end of a semester's worth of trying to keep his attention, but there comes a point where even the least fortunate among us have to own their own actions and Wade might well have been born beyond it. Nathan had seemed like a nice boy, if a little behind, and she'd hoped he'd find a better class of friends than this. It's probably too much to hope he'll be a good influence on Wade; the opposite is far more likely. She's going to regret giving them a chance to prove her wrong, she just knows it._

Out loud, she says, "Nathan, for your own sake, think carefully about any advice of his you take to heart, will you? Lord knows most of the stories the other students tell you about him are likely to be exaggerated and it's not my job to tell you who your friends are, but the teaching staff aren't the only ones around here who's lives he's made more difficult."

She doesn't wait for an answer; with that delivered, she goes straight past them, heels clicking around the corner out of sight.

Wade's eyes (and tongue, the moment her back is turned) follow her until he's comfortably sure she's out of earshot, and then he's only got eyes for Nathan. "You are my _new best friend_ ," he breathes.

The actual emotion he's feeling for Nathan is perhaps a little more intense than 'friendship', but as polite fictions go it's fairly benign. Nathan gives him a one-shouldered shrug. "Owed you a favour. Going to tell me what that was all about?"

Wade stares at him for a second too long before answering. In his mind, the impulse to play down his latest prank erupts, and is swiftly buried under a solid resolution that he is not ( _not not not_ ) going to act like a love-sick girl and make out like he's anything he's not just to impress the hot new guy who's actually talking to him for some reason.

"They think I toilet papered the headmaster's car," he says, flicking his fingernails like it's no big deal.

Nathan feels like he's missing something. "Did you?"

"Yeah, but that's not the _point_ , is it?"

Nathan stares at him. 'Why' seems like the wrong question. 'What _is_ the point' doesn't seem much better. The ocean's worth of animosity in Wade's mind directed towards the teaching staff in general and the principal in particular are the best answer he's going to get. He doesn't feel any desire to pry any deeper. 

It's a mindset that takes a bit of work to get his head around. Back home, the chain of command was something you didn't question; there was too much at stake. On the other hand, back home, it was taken for granted you'd have seen the battlefield by the time you were fourteen, if not much earlier. Here, where the young are hardly allowed to make a decision in their own right before their eighteenth birthdays, maybe it's not so hard to imagine why someone like Wade would feel the need to rebel against the structure by any means available. 

"So," he says instead, "do I get that tour for real?"

It's definitely the right answer. Wade brightens in a way that's starting to become quite familiar. "Hehe, oh you _bet!_ C'mon!"

* * *

Wade may not be popular with the rest of the student body, but Nathan is not by any means the only friend he's got. In the time B.N. (Before Nathan), the prime candidate for the position of Wade's best friend was a boy whose name is Jack Hammer, but who everyone who's not a teacher calls 'Weasel'. His official place in the school hierarchy is somewhere among the science nerds, just not – apparently – as the kind that any of the other science nerds talk to if they can avoid it. He's the kind of science nerd who spent several weeks last summer with Wade in an abandoned lot behind Wade's house making notes on how to get the biggest possible explosion out of a home-made coke-bottle bomb until they both got bored with the limitations of mixing shredded aluminium cans and household cleaning fluid and were caught attempting to siphon petrol out of Weasel's father's car. He refuses to get directly involved in most of Wade's on-campus pranks, though he will sometimes draw up schematics for them.

The bigger surprise among Wade's few friends is his relationship with Theresa O'Rouke Cassidy, a girl who is not only indisputably beautiful by anyone's standard but generally accepted to be the single biggest reason why the school choir was forced to buy itself a bigger trophy cabinet at the beginning of the year. She's not exactly in Wade's 'group', so to speak; she has her own friends, but she will say hi to him in the hallway without fail, and sometimes, bucking every unspoken rule of the student social system, even wander over to Wade and Weasel's cafeteria table and spend minutes at a time screwing up her face into exaggerated expressions of distaste to hide how much she wants to smile at his terrible jokes. 

Nathan wouldn't have thought anything of it, but Wade seemed so convinced when they first met that attractive people didn't ever associate with him that it throws him when he's first introduced to 'Terry', who doesn't seem to fit into Wade's mental model any better than Nathan does. Theresa arches her eyebrows at him in return, and Nathan is reminded that he's not the only person in this century who can, occasionally, make a pretty decent guess at what's going on in someone else's head. 

"How did you get to know Wade?" he asks her, later, when they run into each other without Wade to mediate. 

"Is that your way of asking why someone like me would hang around with the likes of Wade?" she returns, point blank. She has the kind of Irish accent that doesn't even exist anymore where Nathan comes from, and not for the first time he's glad to have the mental echo of what she means to fall back on in case he gets bogged down under all the unfamiliar vowels. 

It seems safer to stick with honesty. "It crossed my mind," he admits. "Hardly anyone else around here seems like they'd give him the time of day."

"Hardly anyone else here moved from Ireland to live with their father when they were fourteen either," says Theresa. "I caught hell for my accent from the moment I walked through those doors, and Wade was the first boy here to stand up for me. He wouldn't thank me for trying to tell you he's any better than what he lets most of 'em think, but you'd be blind to believe it doesn't get to him. Most 'a the time he doesn't get the chance to be anything else."

Nathan isn't sure how to respond to that. Even he might not have been nearly as fast to accept so much as a bottle of water from him if he hadn't been able to see inside Wade's head. 

"He means well," he tries. 

Theresa gives him a long, shrewd look, like she's weighing probabilities in her head with him as the scales. Nathan wonders if she's always this blunt, and how much of her relationship with Wade comes from how neither bother to mince their words.

After a bit, she says, "He's got a terrible crush on you," and watches him carefully for his response. 

"I'd... noticed," Nathan admits. "He told you?"

Theresa snorts. "He didn't have to. Wade's many things but 'subtle' is none of them. He let it slip out that he likes boys more than girls months ago, and you're exactly his type. And if he finds out I told you that, he might never forgive me." She doesn't sound scared by the prospect. She's just letting him know the stakes. 

"Why _are_ you telling me?" he asks. 

"Because if you're going to freak out about it and break his heart, I'd rather you did it now than later when he's had time to get attached."

Nathan wonders if there's a way he can explain that where he comes from, they don't even have a word for homophobia. That he grew up around people who'd been brought up to look to him as some sort of messiah since before he was old enough to walk, and that he's been hearing it in their minds all his life. That it's practically a relief to deal with a friend with a crush that doesn't originate from anything more dramatic than the fact he's (apparently) good looking, and doesn't flinch away from a handshake with someone with scar tissue all the way to his fingertips.

"I'm not going to freak out," he says. "It doesn't bother me."

"Really," says Theresa.

"It'll probably wear off when he gets to know me better," says Nathan. 

Theresa – who has had a lot longer to get to know Wade than he has – looks very, very skeptical about that idea, but whatever test she was putting him through, he seems to have passed it.

* * *

Though he may have bought himself some time with the volleyball joke, Wade is neither so hopelessly smitten nor (contrary to the belief of his teachers) so ignorant that it's not going to dawn on him that his new friend is a bit... _odd_. Sooner or later he's going to notice that Nathan doesn't know a 747 from a 7/11 or Krispy Kremes from Crusty the Clown, and a cover story built out of half-truths and lies is still better than no explanation at all. It'll have to be enough that he's gotten out of introducing himself with a falsehood; next time the subject comes up, Nathan resolves not to avoid it.

The subject doesn't come up in their next couple of meetings (and if he's resolved not to avoid it, he's in no great rush to raise it either), but by the end of the week it's more or less moot because the school grapevine has beaten him to it. Wade makes himself sound fairly casual when he asks if Nate wants to hang out after school, but under the mental litany of _don't make it sound like you're asking him on a date don'tdon'tdon't make it sound like you're asking him on a date_ , Nathan can feel him buzzing with curiosity. He's spent all week trying to figure his new friend out, but Nathan doesn't fit neatly into any of his usual boxes. This is just the breakthrough he's overdue for. 

"So Nate, let's talk about you," he says at the first opportunity. "I know you just moved here, but I didn't catch where you moved _from_."

Nathan looks at him sideways and smiles despite himself. He can only wish he could be as casual about this subject as Wade's being. "Someone told you, didn't they?"

Wade smiles sheepishly back. "Well, yeah, but you can't blame me for wanting to hear it from you. The school rumour mill is churning out the story that you're, like, some kind of major medical miracle."

Nathan says, "I suppose you could put it that way." 

"Aw, no need to be modest, Nate-y," says Wade, slapping him on the back. "No really, how would you put it? Weas said he heard it from a guy who heard it from a guy who heard it from you, but this is the same Weas who believed the rumour that Mr Weatherborn was a brain-sucking alien for a whole week before he found out I was the one that started it."

"How much did you hear?" Nathan replies, knowing he's cheating but still dealing with a crippling lack of enthusiasm for volunteering anything he doesn't have to. 

"Uh, genetic thing," Wade sounds like he's going through a mental checklist, "you grew up in a hospital, but now you're all better? I'm figuring there's a bit missing in the middle somewhere."

"Actually, that's about the size of it." It's almost exactly as much as he's told everyone who didn't ask for more. (It would be closer to the truth to call it something he'd contracted as a baby, though inasmuch as the root problem involves being a second-generation member of the X-Men, he supposes 'genetic thing' isn't a bad descriptor. It's nothing like the lie in 'hospital'.) 

"So what kinda genetic thing was it?" says Wade. "I can ask that, right?"

Nathan had hoped maybe Wade's own experience with awkward questions might discourage him from prying, but on the contrary, it's becoming apparent he feels it's his turn to grill someone else about their medical history. There's a part of Wade – that part that still can't get his head around the idea that someone as good looking as Nate actually wants to hang out with him – that's _relieved_ that Nathan is, in his own way, a total weirdo. 

If only he knew. 

Nathan takes a deep breath. "The kind that gives you partial paralysis down the left half of your body, then spreads to several of your internal organs and leaves you reliant on high-tech machinery to keep them running. Scrambles your vision and hearing in some creative ways too." 

"Whoa." Wade, possessor of one of the most active imaginations Nathan has ever encountered, is having real trouble picturing him with anything less than full mobility. "What was that like?"

"It's a bit hard to describe. To tell you the truth, I'm still getting used to moving and hearing things 'normally'." That much is true.

"So.... this is your first year in a regular school? Damn. That's gotta be a head trip."

"You have no idea," Nathan promises him.

"Hey, I bet we could trade weird doctor stories!" Wade sounds altogether too cheerful about the prospect. "You'd win, but I got to be prodded and probed by every dermatologist on this side of the country before they gave up, though they never let _me_ get to miss school over it."

It probably says a lot about Wade's life that he can _pronounce_ 'dermatologist'. "To be honest, Wade, I get a little tired of talking about it."

Wade shrugs it off. "That's cool. For what it's worth, you totally don't come across like a guy who lived in a box most of his life."

Nathan tries to figure out what he's supposed to make of that statement. "Thank you, I think?"

Wade snickers at him. "I mean it, I wouldn't have had a clue! I gotta say, Nate, you're really not built like a guy who's spent the last fifteen years in bed."

Nathan follows Wade's gaze down to his forearm. Letting himself tense up over the uncomfortable subject isn't doing anything to mask the muscle tone. Trust Wade to notice. "Actually, staying in good physical shape was one way to slow how fast it spread. Doctor's orders."

Wade scratches an arm, still staring at Nathan's forearm. "Think you lost me somewhere between 'hooked up to a bunch of beeping machines in bed' and 'grew up in a private gym'."

Nathan does his best to laugh it off. "Physical therapy – I think most hospitals are equipped for it. I might have given you the wrong idea about how much time I spent bedridden."

Wade still looks a little unconvinced that one can be fit enough to pump weights but not make it to class. He's starting to get dangerously close to questions that fall outside the level of detail Nathan is equipped to deal with. 

"I've put on a lot of extra weight just in the last few months since they gave me the all-clear," he explains. "Actually, I'm still a lot less toned on my bad side. Look, I'll show you," he adds on a whim.

The look on Wade's face the moment he realises that Nate is about to _take off his shirt_ right in front of him is quite spectacular. 

He feels a little guilty about resorting to such unfair tactics, but as a means to shut Wade's brain down long enough for Nathan to steer the conversation on to other topics, it works like a charm. 

He's sure Wade will forgive him eventually.


	4. Chapter 4

Within a twenty-five minute journey of Wade's house there are at least six different venues where one can go to take after-school or weekend classes in assorted martial arts. Wade knows this because he's already taken classes at and subsequently been kicked out of five of them, for, in his own words, 'being too good'. He's still working on the sixth, but it can only be a matter of time.   
  
Unlike most of Wade's prouder achievements, the roots of this are Blind Al's fault.   
  
Wade's been in foster care for almost as long as he can remember, bouncing from one family to the next, lasting only as long as it took each new candidate to admit they hadn't the faintest idea how to cope with him; but at two years, seven months and counting, Blind Alfred holds a record she will likely take with her to the grave. Well into her sixties, age has shrivelled her into the kind of acerbic old woman who'll happily spend the rest of her twilight years enjoying the freedom to say whatever she damn well pleases and get away with it. Al gives the impression she lost most of her patience with the universe at large around the same time she lost her eyesight, and if the years since haven't been kind to her then it's a pretty good bet she gave as good as she got along the way. From what Nathan has seen, her relationship with Wade is based mainly on insults and threats, hurled incessantly back and forth, usually from opposite ends of the corridor ("Ninety-eight tax-free dollars a week is what you're worth to me, Wade Wilson, and the day you give me more than that much trouble you'll find yourself living behind the dumpster!" "I know where you sleep, Al, don't you forget that either!"). Neither has actually killed the other yet though, which is probably the best evidence anyone could ask for that they must secretly like each other a great deal.   
  
When it had become apparent that approximately every single bully at his school had it in for Wade, Al's response was to send him to martial arts classes, ostensibly to 'help build up his confidence'. This worked, but ( _probably_ – it was hard to be entirely sure with Al) not in the way she'd intended. Wade soaked up six weeks of taekwondo like an alcoholic trying to get drunk on watery beer, and when next he found himself cornered by a group of four jeering fratboys-in-waiting armed with their fists and a lot of grimace-worthy jibes about rearranging Wade's face to make it even uglier, they left the encounter with a total of two black eyes, a set of bruised ribs, three broken fingers and one broken nose. Wade, meanwhile, walked away without a scratch, which must have seemed like a much better victory before the subject of just who had thrown the first punch suddenly became very important.   
  
Fortunately for Wade, a little old blind lady who can yell like a drill sergeant and is willing to show up at the principal's office at short notice had a remarkable effect on one's odds of not getting instantly expelled. Less fortunately, she was also capable of coming up with punishments more creative than anything a mere principal could dream of, but the important thing was that Wade, while still not exactly popular, doesn't get bullied so much anymore.   
  
"...but the only real difference is that _W_ TF Taekwondo was being taught by this loser with the fakest fake accent you ever heard who thought 'wax on, wax off' jokes never got old but couldn't figure out why I was always sniggering at the acronym. So I switched to this kung fu class in this little corner off Main Street and that was _way_ better – with kung fu you don't just do the hand-to-hand, when you get good enough they teach you all these drills with swords and pikes and those neat hooky things they're always swinging around in the demonstrations. So that was pretty cool, but I only got to stay three weeks at that one because it turned out Sifu Wing and Kunihara-sensei were drinking buddies or something, and Kunihara spilled the whole story about me in her judo class and got me kicked out of kung fu too. Judo was _lame_ anyway, you know they don't even let you _punch_ people in judo? I mean, what the fuck is the point of martial arts if it's not all building towards teaching you the secret ultimate 'Boot To The Head' technique? After kung fu I went to this karate class for a bit and it wasn't _as_ good, but it was _way_ better than that judo-crap – they had these _awesome_ flying kick moves they taught us. Of course they _said_ they were mostly just a demo thing because hardly anyone lands them in an actual fight, until I landed one this one time and broke this guy's jaw. So now I'm doing kickboxing..."  
  
Nathan wishes he'd never asked.   
  
"So basically what you're saying," he cuts in, lounging casually backwards, "is you think you can take me."  
  
Wade looks at him in much the same way Mrs Hinrichs did that time he'd had to ask who Bill Clinton was supposed to be. "Uh, _yeah_. Haven’t you been listening? _I know kung fu_."  
  
"So... you _do_ think you can take me?" Nathan asks, with maybe a little too much exaggerated innocence, and Wade glares at him like he wants to know when Nate forgot which of them is supposed to be the funny one around here.   
  
"What I think I can do, _Nate_ ," says Wade, pronouncing each word very deliberately, "is _kick your arse_. What I think I can do is wipe the _floor_ with said _arse_ with both hands tied behind my back, in my sleep, six ways from Sunday _and_ three times before breakfast. But because of how I like you so much, I wasn't gonna offer to demonstrate." Nathan politely declines to draw attention to Wade's apparent fixation on his arse.  
  
This is the last thing Nathan should be doing, but he has his pride and he has his limits, and listening to Wade passing himself off as some sort of master of unarmed combat based on a few months of casual classes and a couple of schoolyard scraps is more than it can take, so what he does is stand up, lean deliberately into Wade's personal space, and smile. "Alright. Prove it."  


* * *

  
Wade's backyard is overgrown well past the stage where you never know exactly what you're going to step on until you do. Blind Al has opinions on the subject of gardening, which mostly amount to her refusing to give a crap about a garden that won't appeal to any sense that matters to her, regardless of how much work she puts into it, so she doesn't. Occasionally she'll pay someone to mow the lawn, but it hasn't happened recently. The important thing is that there's nothing out here they have to worry about damaging, except each other.   
  
Wade turns out to be a good deal better than Nathan had given him credit for. It's painfully obvious he's never been in a 'real' fight – nothing is a real fight to Nathan's mind until you've taken on well-trained opponents with your life on the line – but he has the basics down easy as breathing, and parts of him can bend in ways that Nathan doesn't think he's ever seen before. He takes all of about five seconds to learn not to bother pulling his punches, and he's got no qualms whatsoever about fighting dirty. Meanwhile, Nathan hasn't so much as thrown a real kick since he lost the TO and it's left him with his balance forever slightly off, and his old habit of always blocking with the left has gone from an advantage to an embarrassment as Wade lands blow after blow on what is rapidly becoming a very tender forearm. What all this means is that it takes a full couple of minutes longer than he'd counted on for him to knock Wade clean off his feet.  
  
" _Damn_ ," breathes Wade, staring up at him from the dirt, too impressed to resent his loss as much as he probably should. "Where'd you learn to do that?"  
  
Nathan can't tell the truth and doesn't have anything resembling a convincing lie. "I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," he says, offering Wade a hand up.   
  
"Oh, well if it was a matter of national security, you could've just _said_ ," says Wade, still a little put out that Nate never bothered to mention working black-belt level self defence lessons into his physical therapy sessions or whatever, but he's grinning back despite himself. What Nathan learned the first day they met after the volleyball joke still holds true – Wade doesn't mind his secrets, as long as Nathan doesn't bother to pretend he doesn't _have_ secrets (with the exception of any secrets that the rest of the school has found out ahead of him, that is). Wade's more preoccupied with considering the pros and cons of trying the old 'pull you down when you try to pull me up' prank while he has the chance, but he thinks better of it and lets Nathan help him to his feet.   
  
"Best out of three?" he suggests.  
  
The third match is moot by the time they get to it, but they go the extra round anyway.   
  
"Okay, I give," Wade admits at last. "Not gonna go all Shounen Jump about it, I can admit that you're better than me. Y'know, a little."  
  
"Just a little?" Nathan teases.   
  
"Well I wouldn't want it to go to your head or anything." Wade picks himself off the ground without help this time, but when he looks back up at Nathan there's something in his face that's just this side of calculating. "Seriously, Nate, is this the part where I hear about how your miracle cure involved them transplanting your brain into a body cloned from the cryogenically frozen remains of Bruce Lee?"  
  
"You got me," Nathan deadpans. "I get mistaken for Bruce Lee on the street all the time."  
  
"Okay, point." Wade considers this. "Chuck Norris?"  
  
"Tell you what," says Nate, on another of those whims that seem to come up so often when he's around Wade, "if you can beat me, even once, I'll tell you the whole story."  
  
"Yeah?" says Wade, perking up. "I mean, I'm not gonna have to worry about the FBI showing up all over my doorstep afterwards? I know I've got one of those forgettable faces, but I wasn't planning on ending up on the run from the state for at least another birthday or two."  
  
"I promise," Nate says, and realises he means it, nevermind that the odds of Wade ever making that condition are comfortably remote.   
  
"You're on," grins Wade, but between that and challenging Nathan to the inevitable round four, he hesitates. "You reckon you could show me how to do that grab breaker move you pulled in the last round?"  
  
Nathan raises an eyebrow and holds out an arm.   
  
By the end of the day, Nathan is officially mystified as to what all Wade's other instructors' problems were. He's cockier than is good for anyone and he's got attitude to burn, but by any other standards Wade makes an excellent student.   
  
It's possible, of course, that Wade's never worked with anyone he was as determined to impress as Nathan. It's also possible he tries a little harder than he otherwise might to avoid touching Wade any more than he has to when it comes to adjusting his stance or letting him try out another grab, and that he hits a little harder than he usually would for practice purposes. It's better than letting all the body contact involved in this get awkward for either of them.   
  
It's not until the end of the day that he remembers to worry about whether he might have let himself get a little too carried away, and thinking back he suddenly doesn't like the odds that he hasn't done Wade any real damage during the session. He knows Wade felt some of those blows; he'd _felt_ Wade feel them. Wade seems just fine though – he doesn't have so much as a bruise that Nathan can see, and that’s more than Nathan can say for himself.   
  
He's just on the edge of wondering whether it means something he should think about when Wade spots him looking distracted and tackles him from behind, and that's the last he thinks of it.   



	5. Chapter 5

Wade mostly manages to be fairly unobtrusive with his attempts to help Nathan catch up with everything he missed getting to do all those years 'in hospital'. However, when it comes up that Nathan a) doesn't have any idea what's funny about the phrase 'land shark', b) has never seen a single episode of Saturday Night Live, and c) has never even _heard_ of Saturday Night Live, Wade's jaw drops.  
  
"I thought you grew up in a hospital, not a _cave!_ " he shrieks. "Didn't they give you a TV?"  
  
"Sometimes," says Nathan, vaguely. "I wasn't up to watching it very often."  
  
"Uh huh," says Wade, like he's having real problems with Nathan's priorities. "Well of course they would've wanted to keep you from a taxing activity like lying on your back watching TV. I bet that would've really cut into your _weight-pumping time_."  
  
"I did tell you about the vision and hearing part," Nathan tries. He's starting to wish he and Scott had got around to talking out that particular symptom in a bit more detail.  
  
Fortunately, Wade has more important things in mind than picking this one apart.  
  
"Nate, _man_ ," he breathes, resting a hand on Nathan's arm, eyes wide with sincerity, "you have been _missing out_."  
  
About thirty seconds later, Nathan is watching Wade dial Weasel's number, jittering with urgency. "Weas? I need to borrow your entire DVD collection. Yeah, _all_ of it. It's an emergency! No, you listen, Weas, lemme explain this in terms you'll understand: I just found out Nate’s never seen a _single episode_ of MST3K. Uh-huh, exactly. I knew you'd see it my way. See you in ten."  
  
The look on Wade's face after he hangs up is slightly manic, but Nathan doesn't really start worrying until Wade starts making The List.  
  
It's itemised. There are sub-headings. In some places there are sub- _sub_ -headings, based on what's in Weasel's DVDs, what's showing on TV this month, what's in repeats, and what will have to be 'acquired' by other means. By Wade's calculations, it's going to keep his best friend busy until he's old enough to afford his own TV.  
  
Nathan is left trying to figure out exactly when he lost control of the situation.  


* * *

From that moment forth, showing Nathan exactly what he's been missing out on has become Wade's new mission in life.  
  
Nathan finds he doesn't mind this much. He doesn't get the appeal of most of the programs Wade's so determined to introduce him to, but it dawns on him before long that somewhere under all the misplaced enthusiasm and bad assumptions, Wade might have something of a point. Popular culture is only the beginning of what Nathan doesn't get about this century, but since his first day of school it's been fairly evident that he's going to have to put some effort into learning what makes people tick in this day and age, and this might not be a bad place to start. You can learn a lot about people based on what they do in their downtime.  
  
That may be an overly-elaborate justification for why he's started spending a couple of afternoons a week sprawled on Wade's couch in front of a flickering TV screen, alternately watching and listening to Wade chattering on about exactly when Scrubs jumped the shark and how many episodes of Friends you're obligated to watch even if you don't like it so you get everyone else's references, and so on. The simpler answer would be that he's enjoying it; not the programs themselves, necessarily, but Wade's commentary makes up the difference.  
  
The world of network TV swiftly proves to be a vastly more complicated beast than he'd realised, all a complex mess of current affairs and game shows and reality TV, talk shows and infomercials, docudramas and documentaries and mockumentaries and two dozen other overlapping categories that don't add up to give more than the illusion of order to it all.  
  
"So that thing we watched yesterday was a drama?" he tries.  
  
"Nuh-uh, _soaps_ are about drama," says Wade, back in his authoritative voice. " _Dramas_ are about cops or doctors. Or lawyers. Or all three."  
  
"And sitcoms?"  
  
"Sitcoms are about a bunch of losers who live in the same house with three walls and a laugh-track. Unless they've got a bigger budget or they're trying to be arty. Now shush, they're about to blow something up."  
  
On screen, people in protective glasses set off an entire nest of fireworks rockets all at once. Wade whoops appreciatively and punches the air. He settles back on the couch with a grin on his face.  
  
"I think I'm still stuck on the soap/drama distinction," says Nathan.  
  
"You're just getting stuck on the names," says Wade, not looking away from the TV. "Dramas _contain_ drama, but soaps are _all about_ drama, and we're talking 180 proof, home-grown, triple-certified, _industrial grade_ drama where everyone's in a love triangle with his long lost sister and anyone who's not pregnant has cancer and everything ends in a big dramatic close-up."  
  
They watch as the Mythbusters conclude that _if_ the guy behind the original myth just happened to be a super-durable mutant with skin able to withstand more than 5000 psi, then the homemade rockets-sled myth is _totally_ plausible. Otherwise? Bus- _TED_.  
  
"Look at it this way," Wade goes on, as the credits roll, "if it's a show where there's a guy who's whines about whether he should date some girl at work, then it's a drama. But if she goes mad, and then she gets better, but then dies in a tragic accident, then she miraculously comes back, only it turns out it was really her twin, and her twin's evil, and then _she_ dies and someone gets amnesia, and the guy moves on to someone else and finally some kid shows up on his doorstep claiming to be his long lost son he had with the _first_ girl, nevermind how that was only like three years ago but somehow the kid's already like eighteen, then it's a soap. Unless it's a talk show; then it's Jerry Springer."  
  
Nathan can't think of anything much to say to that.  
  
"So if you had a show about a cop, a lawyer and a doctor locked in a love triangle, living in the same house with a laugh track, what would that be?" he tries instead.  
  
"I dunno," says Wade, "but I'd watch it. Wouldn't you?"  


* * *

The fact that Wade will quite happily watch more or less whatever's on TV at the time should not be taken to mean he doesn't have some very definite opinions on what constitutes good entertainment. There are a lot of movies on his list, and his selections betray a particular love for comedies with lots of fart jokes and action movies with lots of big explosions; even more so if they come with ridiculous effects budgets, a title with the word 'vs' in the middle, or a billing by Jackie Chan (and even _more_ so if there's a scene where Brad Pitt is shirtless, but he doesn't admit that part out loud). He's adamant the best of them are even better up on the big screen, and it's not long before he's dragging Nathan with him to see 'that new movie by the guy who did that one about the fake superhero, y'know – with the pencil trick and all the badass car chase scenes'.  
  
Nathan hadn't expected to have much patience for the action genre – it's what amounts to people from the wrong century trying to tell each other stories about what living his life is (was) like – but underneath all the ridiculously unrealistic scenarios and blatant wire-fu effects, he finds himself with more tolerance for them than he'd assumed. Maybe there's something just a little bit comforting in having evidence that everyone else around here is missing much the same excitement he is. Either way, it doesn't take long for Wade to talk him into it. Blind Al won't give him the money to go see movies very often, and there's no way Wade is going to waste the chance to use the _tragedy_ of how Nathan has never got to see a single movie at the theatre before as an excuse.  
  
"If you boys are planning to make out, make sure you get seats in the back row; no-one else wants to watch that crap," she hollers at them as they walk out.  
  
"Sorry Al, didn't hear that over the sound of a whole afternoon of glorious _freedom_ , courtesy of your wallet," Wade yells back, after only a very slight panicky jump and with only an even slighter trace of nervous stutter. "Don't bother to wait up, I'll be giving your credit card the time of its life." He slams the door and gives Nathan an unconvincingly exaggerated eye-roll.  
  
Nathan feels embarrassed on his behalf. Blind Al's only joking to get a rise out of him – _mostly_ only joking, but he's starting to wonder if there's anyone who really knows Wade who _hasn't_ got his preferences all figured out, and the fact he personally had needed psychic abilities to find out feels a lot like cheating.  
  
Wade's still a little jittery when they get to the cinema and takes a few seconds too long locked in some mental game of chicken over where they're actually going to sit before picking out a couple of seats somewhere in the middle towards the front. He goes on to spend slightly more effort than necessary on placing the giant box of buttered popcorn he'd assured Nathan was a vital part of the experience so that they can both get to it without it seeming like an excuse to get anyone's hands to brush anyone else's. By the time they've sat through the obligatory fifteen minutes of trailers, he's more or less settled down.  
  
The movie isn't quite what Wade had lead him to expect, which was another martial arts heavy extravaganza set in a virtual world made with flexible physics. _The Matrix_ had been one of the first movies on Wade's list, but this one is far more grounded and practically devoid of floor-sweeping polyvinyl trench coats, and isn't going to get nearly the same suspension of disbelief out of anyone. It's painfully obvious no-one involved with the script has ever been in a real shared-consciousness experience, but within the context of the made-up rules they're working by the story does come together quite well; as Wade's always reminding him, it's not meant to be _real_ , it's meant to be _entertaining_.  
  
Even so, he spends as much time watching Wade watch the movie as he spends watching it himself, as Wade's clearly getting a lot more out of it than he is; after the first hour or so, he's almost forgotten Nathan's even there. In Wade's mind, following the plot takes a back seat to pondering the all important question of which of the various male leads he finds the most distractingly attractive. The main lead is out (Wade has never forgiven him for appearing in 'that stupid Titanic movie' that he will never dare admit made him ball his eyes out over the ending). His sidekick very nearly goes the same way early on in the narrative, for the crime of 'being such a loser and getting himself taken hostage by some _girl_ in almost the first scene', but a spectacular zero-gravity fight scene later in the narrative has Wade swiftly revising his opinion. Even then, an extended sequence of one of Wade's other favourite candidates almost single-handedly taking out a small army in the snow is more than enough to keep the question open.  
  
Wade's buzzing with excitement about the movie long after they walk out, and even Nathan has to admit that yeah, he'd managed to enjoy that quite a lot (though he does keep catching himself right on the verge of launching into telling Wade all about how it compared to that time Stryfe had locked him and all his unit into a psychic dreamscape, because some of the parallels really are slightly unnerving, right down to some of the more ridiculous things they'd had to go through to get out). His good mood tapers as the minutes wear on under the growing sense that there's something about Wade's reaction that feels slightly wrong. Somewhere in the middle of listening to Wade wax on about how he heard that guy in the rotating hallway scene did all his own stunts and _damn_ , always thought he only did lame rom-comms and indy stuff but that was fucking _badass_ , it comes to him: in all the time they've known each other, this is the longest Wade has ever spent obsessing over a hopeless crush on someone that's _not_ him.  
  
Wade must have a real thing for the unattainable, he thinks, uncharitably, before kicking himself for being so unfair. If his ego can't take the fact that someone who's been smitten with him from the moment they first saw each other is the same someone who might be prone to the occasional celebrity crush, then it's certainly not Wade who should be accused of being flighty. He's known since they met – since they day _before_ they met, technically – that it doesn't take more than a pretty face and maybe a little hint of muscle tone to catch Wade's interest. The only surprise is learning that a propensity for pulling grenade launchers from thin air at a moment's notice and calmly blowing the hell out of the nearest enemy was something Wade would find so _sexy_. As he waffles on and on about car chases and tripwires and grappling moves and explosives it's impossible to miss just how _much_ Wade appreciated those scenes, on the most visceral level.  
  
There's even a moment when he looks at Nathan at the end of a sentence and suddenly remembers, oh yeah, _Nate_ – his best friend who he maybe sorta has had a giant honking crush on for only _forever_ – only right now he's a little busy _dreaming a little bigger_ to remember why because even if good old Nate can kick his head in it's not like he'd be able to do _that_ with a snowmobile.  
  
That there is officially as much as Nathan can take, because he comes dangerously close to pointing out, out loud, that of _course_ he could. He could have done every damn stunt in that movie, and he wouldn't even have needed the wires or the special effects budget to pull it off. (Perhaps not the ones in the car chase. But only because he's never driven a 21st century car. Yet.)  
  
Maybe going to see action movies with Wade isn't such a good idea after all.  
  
By bedtime that night he's far enough away from that first gut reaction to approach it rationally, eventually deciding he may as well forgive himself for the worst of it. It's only natural that he'd be flattered by someone crushing as hard and as harmlessly on him as Wade does, but Wade doesn't expect, never has expected, anything back; he likes having Nathan for just-a-friend far too much to risk it. The least Nathan can do is show the same level of maturity in return; it's ridiculous to let himself get jealous of a sentiment he's never given Wade the slightest reason to think he might ever return. It's got to be pride more than anything else, he concludes; it's only human to feel a bit put out when he's being passed over for _not_ having the very same background and skill set that he's spent all this time wishing he had the freedom to tell people like Wade about.  
  
It's probably nothing he needs to examine any more closely. Above all, he doesn't have the slightest right to be proud of himself for not stooping to the level of actively flirting with Wade on the way home to get his attention back.  
  
In the middle of it all, the moment had slipped by where they could have _that_ conversation. He could have needled Wade about just how _much_ he was enjoying some of those pretty actors. He could have made it sound like a joke, but in that little gap while Wade laughed at him and before he tried to pass it all off as Nate being a bitch, he could made it known that it really wouldn't bother him if Wade did feel like that about guys. Wade would probably have taken it okay; he'd have been sheepish but he wouldn't try to deny it. He'd be happy to know he could do this: go see movies (full of deliciously hot guys) with his (straight) best friend (who's never going to be more than a friend but who cares, right?) and it would all be okay.  
  
Only, in a week's time, Al's not going to be in the mood to give him the money to see any more movies, but Nate's going to be right there, gorgeous and unattainable. Knowing his best friend doesn't mind that he likes guys isn't going to make that any easier for Wade – not as long as the 'I don't mind if you like _me_ ' conversation is still hanging unspoken between them, and no matter how he turns it over in his head, Nathan can't think of any way to approach that one that won't make it all worse rather than better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **~To Be Continued~**


End file.
